My research involves studying the interactions between humans and their environments. I describe and explore the places and spaces in which people live in, move to and move from, and the cultural, social and environmental modifications humans make to their environments. Who we are is contingent on where we have come from, and when.

My particular interest is in cultural memories and the interlinkages between memory and identity. I have explored this theme through research into Polish cultural memory as it has been articulated in public spaces through monuments and memorials, and in private spaces, between and within generations of Poles in Poland and in diaspora in Australia. I am interested in how mobilities affect the transferal and maintenance of cultural memory and how war and totalitarianism disrupts their transmission in public spheres. I am currently extending this research to examine how the public interact with vernacular memorials in Berlin and Warsaw. I am also exploring the haptic geographies of WWII memorialisation in Singapore.

I use qualitative and quantitative methodologies including, surveying, interviewing, ethnography and participant observation. Most recently applied these skills to a multidisciplinary scientific team on an ARC Linkage project on Rip Current Awareness, developing a social methodology. Other key research interests include urban to rural/regional migration, cultural memory and identity and parenting in academia.

CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS

The Geography of Memorialisation in Everyday Places.

Using an ethnographic approach, this project will examine how the public engages with specific representations of the past in a number of everyday landscapes. This project will interrogate if the prevalence of sites of memory in public spaces gives memory a ‘persistent presence’, through which the everyday populace actually engages with the memorial (Bal 1999: viii). The project does not seek challenge the importance or the validity of the remembrances of war, rather it will clarify how diverse publics relate to their histories through their engagements with it, and knowledge of what is being commemorated in the everyday urban façade.

With Dr Natascha Klocker (UoW), we are investigating the career pathways of geography academics with young children. A principal goal of this research is to uncover strategies used by fellow geographers to build and maintain their track records while caring for young children.

This collaborative project (with Dr Daniel Robinson) investigates Moken livelihoods along a stretch of the Andaman coast near Khao Lak Thailand. We seek to better understand how Moken livelihoods and land rights may have been impinged since the 2004 Tsunami with a focus on the loss of land regarded by the Moken as sacred. We are also interested in the inter- and intra-generational transfer of Moken cultural identities.

Our previous research in Khao Lak in 2013 is documented in the following publications.

This research seek to uncover how treechange migration shapes the social fabric on regional towns by exploring both lifestyle and economic rationales for urban to rural relocations. It combines survey, interviews, focus groups and photo-observation methodlogies to establish whether treechange migrants create demand for new housing, modify the landscape through rural gentrification and provide the impetus for burgeoning food and wine industries. This research has been conducted in Bathurst and Orange in Central Western NSW, Australia, and in the Southern Highlands, NSW, Australia.

Research

Danielle Drozdzewski is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography. I specialise in the interactions of people and place, with specific expertise in memory, identity and migration. My overarching research theme is the examination of the geographies of remembrance. I investigate how memories of culture and of place are integral to the formation and maintenance of identities, from the personal to the supranational. Allied to these investigations is the study of migration, through which I have focused on what motivates people to move, the outcomes of such mobilities, to better understand interactions between people and places.

Publications

Books

Drozdzewski D; De Nardi S; Waterton E, (eds.), 2016, Memory, Place and Identity: Commemoration and Remembrance of War and Conflict, Culture, Space and Society, Routledge, Abingdon

Book Chapters

Drozdzewski D, 2017, 'Locating the geopolitics of memory in the Polish streetscape', in The Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and Place, pp. 114 - 131, http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315554464

Drozdzewski D, 2011, 'Waves of migration exclusion and inclusion: The experiences of Polish Australians', in Migration, Citizenship and Intercultural Relations: Looking through the Lens of Social Inclusion, pp. 59 - 73

Journal articles

Broadbent GH;Drozdzewski D;Metternicht G, 2018, 'Electric vehicle adoption: An analysis of best practice and pitfalls for policy making from experiences of Europe and the US', Geography Compass, vol. 12, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12358

Working Papers

Conference Abstracts

Drozdzewski D;Klocker N, 2016, 'Parenting in the academy – measuring and valuing care-work and wage-work', in Academic life in the measured university: pleasures, paradoxes and politics, Academic life in the measured university: pleasures, paradoxes and politics, Sydney, presented at Academic life in the measured university: pleasures, paradoxes and politics, Sydney, 29 June - 01 July 2016, http://www.itl.usyd.edu.au/getinvolved/aic2016/default.htm

Peta Wolifson – ‘A comparative study of the motivations and outcomes of ‘organic’ and ‘new-build’ gentrification in the retail landscape of Surry Hills’, (Co-Supervisor) click here for the executive summary (PDF)